Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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Ephesians two, Verses Fifteen through twenty
two. For this reason, because I
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have heard of your faith in the
Lord Jesus and your love toward all the
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saints, I do not cease to
give thanks for you, remembering you in
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my prayers that the god of Our
Lord, Jesus Christ, the Father of
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glory, May give you a spirit
of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge
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of him, having the eyes of
your hearts enlightened, that you may know
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what is the hope to which he
has called you, what are the riches
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of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of
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his power toward us who believe,
according to the working of his great might,
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that he worked in Christ, when
he raised him from the dead and
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seated him at his right hand in
the heavenly places, far above all rule
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and authority and power and Dominion and
above every name that is named, not
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only in this age but also in
the one to come, and he put
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all things under his feet and gave
his head over all things, to the
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church, which is his body,
the fullness of him who fills all in
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all, you may be seated.
What's morning we looked at Jonah chapter two
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and considered a few lessons in prayer. If you weren't able to hear that,
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that should be posted online later to
day, if not already. But
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here, as we come to a
few Asians chapter two, we actually have
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more lessons in prayer because, like
Jonah Chapter two, we have the record
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of a prayer. Right Jonah says
I prayed, or did says Jonah prayed,
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and then it describes his prayer.
Well, here Paul's doing a similar
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thing as he does in a lot
of his letters. He tells about his
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prayer, the things that he prays
for. In Verse Sixteen we read I
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do not cease to give thanks to
you or for You, remembering you and
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my prayers. And then in verses
seventeen through the end of that chapter,
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he describes the content of those prayers. He talks about the ways in which
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he is praying for the Ephesian Christians, and I want to just work through
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the passage tonight. I'm just a
section by section, thinking about what it
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is he's praying for and and what
that means for us, because the things
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that he's praying for he is praying
according to God's will. So as we
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hear that, we hear an expression
of what God desires for his church,
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and as we think about that,
I want to think about that connected with
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the very first verse, which is
for this reason, because I have heard
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of your faith in the Lord Jesus
and your love toward the saints or all
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the saints, I do not cease
to give thanks and pray in this way.
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So just connect those things for a
moment. Paul is happy about these
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Christians. He has heard of their
faith in the Lord Jesus and their love,
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and he gives thanks. If you
ever Find Yourself, I'm hesitant for
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some reason or another, for a
doctrinal reason, let's say, a hesitant,
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to encourage someone for the good things
that you're seeing in them. What
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this verse disabuse you of that?
I hear Paul is encouraging these Christians for
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good things that he sees in them, and that's a good thing and no
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doubt that was encouraging, after all
of this teaching that he's been pouring out
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in verses one through fourteen, to
be reminded, to be told that I'm
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telling you these things not because I
don't think you know anything, but to
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build you up to lift you up. Paul sees in this church already faith
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and love. What is maybe this
summary of the whole Christian faith, faith
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in the Lord Jesus and love that
extends out from that faith, particularly to
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the saints. Our brothers, are
sisters, our family, but this faith
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in love that they have is not
a static thing. It's intended to grow.
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Right, Paul doesn't say I've heard
of your faith and love, so
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this will be the last time I'm
writing to you because you finally reached official
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Churchdom, or something like that.
You've finally reached the final state, and
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so I'm moving on to plant other
churches. No, he says, I've
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heard of this faith in love and
I give thanks, and so that's why
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I pray for you that God would
bless you with all of these continuing things.
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John Calvin wrote the knowledge of the
Godly is never so pure that it
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is a clear and unclouded vision.
Right, even the most righteous among us,
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even the most understanding and knowledgeable of
God, we still have blind spots,
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we still have blurry vision, we
still have ways in which we struggle
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to see and understand the things of
the Lord. And so we are called
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to grow, grow, through this
faith that is both expressed and asked for
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in prayer. This is one of
the ways in which we grow in the
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Lord through prayer, and that's because
prayer is intimately connected to faith. It's
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a communication to the Lord in which
we are trusting him, speaking to him,
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depending on him and then, even
that, receiving from him his answers,
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his gifts, his promises. We
speak to him, I'm hopefully,
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in true prayer and true faithful prayer. Were speaking to him in the name
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of the Lord Jesus, depending and
setting ourselves on him, who came to
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save us, who came to be
a a one, to reconcile US between
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a reconcile us to God. We
pray in the name of the Lord Jesus,
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we pray according to the will of
the Father in heaven. And in
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these things, like a good father, he pours out his blessings. He
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says, of course, my children
here, you grow, go and grow,
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and he takes care of them that
way. So how is it that
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these Ephesians are going to grow?
In what specific ways does Paul pray for
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them? And, in turn,
we might ask what kinds of things ought
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we to desire as well for ourselves. What kinds of things ought we to
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pray for as we also grow in
faith and in love? Well, he
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begins in verse seventeen and he says
this, that the God of our Lord
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Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, May give you a spirit of wisdom
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and revelation in the knowledge of him. He begins with the one who gives.
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He prays to God, because God
is the one who who gives to
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us, and he calls God,
he calls he refers to God, the
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father. This way, the God
of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father
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of glory. Now, if that
strikes you as odd, I'm if that
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sort of feels a little doctrinally off, that the father would be called the
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God of Jesus, then it's good
to ask yourself why, as I've been
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saying a lot lately, when we
read something in scripture that sounds doctrinally wrong,
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we should check ourselves right. This
is not an opportunity to change scripture
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right, it's an opportunity to change
our hearts and what we believe. So
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of course we want to understand it
rightly. What is why does Paul Call
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God the God of Jesus Christ?
Well, of course that seems a little
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bit off. Perhaps to you it
might seem a little bit off because you
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believe that Jesus is God. Right, Jesus is God. And if Jesus
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is God, well then how can
God the father be? Jesus is God.
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Well, he is the God and
the Lord and the father of Jesus
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is God, in particular in accord
with his humanity. That's the thing that's
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emphasized here. It's not a denial
of the divinity of Christ. That's what
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our worry is, and rightfully so. We don't want to deny the divinity
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of Christ. But as much as
we don't want it to do as much
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as we don't want to deny the
divinity of Christ, we also don't want
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to deny the humanity of Christ.
Right and as and as a human,
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Jesus has taken on created nature.
He is taken on the uncreated God has
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taken on human nature and he is
he. And in that way, God
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the father is to Jesus in he
is humanity, his God. And that's
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not a sort of Phie in the
sky kind of doctrinal point. That's super
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important and that's because we are not
saved unless Jesus becomes human. Our reconciliation
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to God only happens because Jesus takes
on our part, because he takes on
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our humanity, and he does the
things in humanity that we had not done.
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He suffers for us in the ways
that we could never suffer fully for
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our sins. In order to save
us, Jesus had to become man,
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he had to step in relationship to
the covenant. Instead of being covenant Lord
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and King, which he always remains
in his divinity, he had to take
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on humanity, in which he had
to be obedient and fulfill all the things
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that Adam, that created man,
failed to do. If it weren't for
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the incarnation of Jesus, if it
weren't for Jesus taking on this humanity,
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we would still be in our sins. And so Paul speaks of him in
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this way, partly to remind us
of Christ's great mediation, in which our
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salvations is centered on and rests on, but also as a reminder to these
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gentile Christians that Jesus is not just
the God of Abraham, Isaac Jacob and
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Israel, but he is the god
of all humanity. The Saints of the
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Lord now include the gentiles as well, the EPHESIAN Christians, the TUC son
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Christians, all who believe and trust
in Jesus. Who is God in man
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and what is he ask then,
of the father, God, the Father?
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He says that the Father of glory
may give you a spirit of wisdom
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and of revelation in the knowledge of
him. This is likely echoing themes and
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in promises in the Old Testament,
like Isaiah Eleven, two through three,
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these promises in which the spirit is
promised to come and open our eyes,
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open our hearts, to give us
an understanding of God that we could not
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have otherwise. Paul makes this fascinating
argument in First Corinthians, where he says,
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and I'm paraphrasing here, but he
says you can't know the mind of
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a human person unless they reveal themselves
to you. Right, and you know
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this. Who talked a husbands and
wife? Tell me what you're thinking.
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I can't know what you're saying unless
you tell me. We can't know each
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other's intentions, not fully, and
we're you know. They have to be
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revealed in some way. And Paul
says, if this is true for humans,
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this is also true for God and
whose image we are made. We
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have no access to the knowledge of
God unless the spirit of God reveals God
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to us right we can't. There's
no way to know him in unless he
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gives us that revelation, and in
particular by his spirit. This is important
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because we often think of God is
this sort of abstract body of knowledge that
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we can go pick up, you
know, like a textbook off the shelf.
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May Be tempting, because we do
have textbooks about God, textbooks about
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theology, textbooks, books that teach
us about them and even teach us truly,
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but God is not a set of
principles that we can merely go to
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and and absorb. Nor is he
a kind of great feeling or energy that
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we can, through spiritual practices or
something like that, kind of lift ourselves
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or toss ourselves into this kind of
cloud of experience or something like that.
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No, God is a triune being, a try in God, Father,
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son and Holy Spirit, who is
known only as he reveals himself to us.
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Now, sure, we might be
able to study a textbooks of theology,
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we might come to understand him through
prayer or other means, but that's
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only because he has first revealed himself
to us, to others who explain him
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to us, to our own hearts, which are illumined. And that's what
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he's asking for here. Paul's asking
that God would give, would God would
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reveal through his spirit wisdom and knowledge
that they, that these Effesian Christians,
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and that all of us, that
God would give a spirit of wisdom and
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revelation in the knowledge of him.
Notice also the the these two words wisdom
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and revelation. The knowledge of God
is not a bare knowledge, it's not
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just a set of facts. The
wisdom part of it, the revelation,
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tells us that it has to be
revealed to us right there's the something about
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God that we can't know unless it's
told to us. The wisdom part tells
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us that that other kind of knowledge
that's more than just facts, more than
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just content, but it's this applied
wisdom, applied knowledge, taking the things
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of the Lord and then acting in
a proper way, living in a right
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relationship with him, that that we
might say a higher level of knowing,
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is also dependent on the Lord.
So even if we get a correct set
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of facts, it's still not enough
without his spirit also causing us to really
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live in them, to know them
these ephesian Christians are Christians who are exhibiting
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their faith in love right there,
living out their faith in these obedient ways.
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That's possible because of the spirit of
God and we, and so Paul
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asked that God would continue to pour
that out on them. So that's the
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first thing. Paul Prays for,
that the God of Our Lord, Jesus
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Christ, the Father of glory,
May give you a spirit of wisdom and
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of revelation in what in the knowledge
of him. The second thing is parallel
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to that and explains it further.
He says and having the eyes of your
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hearts enlightened and the eyes of your
hearts enlightened. I'm earlier I mentioned and
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I guess it wasn't heard by also
I'll say it again. The ancient world
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was a dark world. Right.
Steve Ba reminded me of this in his
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commentary. It was a dark world. If without the sunshining, that was
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it. You could have candles perhaps, but those were small things, flickering
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things. Perhaps the biggest lights that
someone might see would be a bonfire on
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the moon, of course, the
sun in the daytime. To have the
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eyes of your hearts enlightened is important. We're apt to forget the darkness of
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this world because we have so much
light around us constantly, all the time.
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But the darkness of this world is
not merely a visual darkness. It's
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a fleshly one, a spiritual darkness. I mean to say as well.
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We can't know the things of the
Lord because we can't see the things of
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the Lord, any more than you
can find your shoes or your keys if
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all the lights are off in your
house and it's a dark night outside and
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you know your left just feeling around. People are like that in this world
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and it's sad. They have a
sense that God is out there, or
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they have a sense that they all
obedience to him, but they just fumble
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around, fumble around going after this
thing and that thing. They fall,
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they trip, they hurt themselves,
they find something that seems important, they
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say, Oh, this must be
God. Oh No, that's not God,
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it's just a vase. That's not
God, that's just your cat.
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But that's what we do. We
take these creaturely things of the world and
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we left them. I was I
found it. How do we get out
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of that darkness? How do we
get out of that blindness? The Bible
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is very clear on this point.
The eyes of our hearts, the most
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inward parts of our beings, have
to be enlightened. The cloudiness, the
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darkness, the blindness, has to
be taken away so that we can open
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up, so that we can see, see what God has done, see
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who he is. Then that brings
us to the third thing. He says.
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Then we might receive this spirit of
revelation and wisdom in the knowledge of
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him and have or and having the
eyes of our heart, of our hearts,
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enlightened. Third, that you may
know what is the hope to which
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he has called you, what are
the riches of his glorious inheritance in the
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saints, and what is the immeasurable
greatness of his power towards us who believe?
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So, list of three things.
First, when we come to the
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knowledge of God in Christ, by
the power of the spirit, when we
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come into a relationship with the Father
in heaven, even as Jesus has a
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relationship with the father in heaven,
something changes, and one of those things
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is that we have hope. That's
one of those things that we come to
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know. That's one of those things
that we call come to see you,
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and we talk about this in visual
language and light language. Right, he'll
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don't worry, there's a light at
the end of the tunnel. Right.
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You know, phrases like that that
we have embedded in our in our language,
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phrases that connect vision and light and
hope. If you can't see the
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light at the end of the tunnel, you have no hope. You're stuck
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in darkness. But Paul says,
is when the spirit comes we can see,
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we can see and we can have
hope, something to move forward to,
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something to rest in, something to
be strong in. Paul wants the
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Ephesian Christians and he wants all Christians
who trust in this, in the Lord
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Jesus and in his father, to
have that hope. Not a strange hope,
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not a made up hope, but, as he says, a hope
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to which you have been called,
purposed by God. And as I say
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that, I hope your minds just
race back to the beginning of Effesians one
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and think about all of the things
that we discussed and discovered there. And
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we can say the same thing about
the next thing that he says. Having
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the hearts of your are the eyes
of your hearts enlightened that you might know
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what is the hope to which he
has called you to what are the riches
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of his glorious inheritance in the saints? As I said before, the Adfhusian
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Christians at as gentiles, pagans,
before coming to faith in Christ as stood,
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to put it in theological terms,
outside of the Covenant, they did
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not have a right to belong to
the promises of God, not by birth
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anyway. They weren't children of Abraham. They didn't belong to God's special family
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that he had been, that he
had had as the apple of his eye
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for generation after generation after generation.
This glorious inheritance in the saints that used
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to be over there and for those
people now belongs to them. What are
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the riches? He wants them to
know? What are the riches of his
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glorious inheritance in the saints, which
is now theirs? And then, finally,
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and what is the immeasurable greatness of
his power toward us who believe?
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The immeasurable greatness of his power toward
us who believe? I'd encourage you to
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memorize that phrase and let it rattle
around in your brain over the next week.
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The immeasurable greatness of his power.
Let it rattle around in your brain,
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because it's something you won't be able
to fully comprehend. Right, because
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it's immeasurable. Right. You know
they tell you when you're when you write,
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you're supposed to take statistics sticks and
put them in terms that people can
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understand. Right, you don't just
say a billion dollars. You Express that
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billion in a way that you can
kind of grasp. You can't grasp this
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one. Right, it's not a
billion, it's not a trillion, it's
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immeasurable, the immeasurable greatness of his
power. Thinking back to Jonah this morning,
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all of them power, of that
wind, all of the ship breaking
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apart, in the fish swallowing Jonah
and Jonah of his life being taken in
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away at all, it's just that
tiny, tiny little event in the course
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of history, this one little event
on the sea and the Mediterranean, this
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tiny little thing that was happening,
was tiny in comparison with the entire universe
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at that very moment that God was
upholding simply and easily, simply by the
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power of his will, millions,
billions, trillions, immeasurable numbers of events
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simultaneously happening simultaneously being worked together in
the history of the world by God.
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We might look at one miracle here
or one fantastic event here, but even
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those things, as you pan back, are tiny and you can keep panning
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back, back, back, back, back and you'll never get to the
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God. You'll never get to him. And then kind of get behind God
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right and then be able to say, okay, I can see him now,
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I can see what he's doing.
The immeasurable greatness of his power,
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but not raw power, he says, the immeasurable greatness of his power toward
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us who believe. What an amazing
thing. As we get towards the end
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of this chapter, he says of
Jesus and he put all things under his
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feet. Right, this is an
expression of power, kingly authority, stamping
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down enemies. What we find is
that the immeasurable greatness of the power of
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God is it is as it is
exercised in Christ. The king does not
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stomp us into oblivion. Instead,
as he goes on to say, he
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is given head over all things to
the church toward us who believes. Parallel
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phrases there which is his body,
the fullness of him who fills all in
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all, to paraphrase something one of
the reformers will getting musical is says.
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He says that Christ does not put
us under his feet as he does with
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his enemies, according to Psalm one
hundred and ten palm too, but he
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holds us in his hand. That's
what he's saying here. When he exercises
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the measurable greatness of his power towards
those who don't believe, they're crushed,
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as we sang in Psalm two earlier. They're blown away like the chaff in
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the wind, those who conspire against
the Lord, those who seek to break
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apart the bonds of the Lord and
his messiahs anointed one. It's no problem
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for him. They are put in
subjection under his feet. But, as
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he says in John Ten twenty nine, no one will seize them, his
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people, his church, out of
his hand. Why? Because we are
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his body, he says. We
are not his enemies. We are so
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closely united to him that the scriptures
tell us we are his body and the
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fullness of God who fills all in
all, these are wonderful things to meditate
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on, and these are the things
that God promises to us in Christ,
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that we come to know when the
spirit of God gives us wisdom and knowledge
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so that we can believe and walk
in love. This power that is exercised
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toward us, those who believe,
according to the great might of God,
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is all done in the Lord Jesus
Christ, as he says in Verse Twenty,
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that he worked in Christ when he
raised him from the dead and seated
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him at the right hand in the
heavenly places, far above all rule and
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authority and power and dominion, and
above every name that is named, not
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only in this age but in the
one to come as well. It might
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be helpful to remember here that the
Ephesians were steeped in a very magical world,
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a world and where there were gods
and goddesses and spirits and and charms
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and amulets and names that you would
collect in order to have power over people,
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names of God's that you wouldn't tell
other people, less they take power
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over you. It was a scare
every world, a terrifying world, full
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of all kinds of things, all
kinds of spirits and powers and and in
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some ways they were right about this. They were not right to give these
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demons the name of God. They
were not right to attribute to these powers
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and these forces of darkness divine ability. But they have a sense that sometimes
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we forget in our very mechanical and
materialistic world or our age, but the
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world is full of darkness and that
we battle spiritual things. Paul recognizes this
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and he speaks to their fear and
he says you don't need to be afraid
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of anything. Why? Because this
one, whom God has raised from the
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dead and seated at his right hand
to this victorious kingly image in the heavenly
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places, far above any and all
rule, power and authority and Dominion,
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above every name that is named,
every spirit, every God, every goddess,
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everything that you might fear. He's
above them all. He's more power
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from them all. He puts them
under his feet. Quoting Musculus, he
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says he does not have us under
his feet, where he would keep wolves
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and bears and lions, that is, every hostile power. Keeps us in
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his hand, where he serves and
protects us. We are kept in the
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loving hand of God, protected,
served, cared for, watched over.
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But all of those things we fear, all of the ones that would seek
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to do us harm, he crushes, he destroys by the immeasurable power of
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his greatness. To those who do
not fear God, this should be terrifying
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to know that God who sends storms
and raises people from the dead and who
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has sent his son into the world
and seated him now at his right hand
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to rule in this way. They
ought to fear, they ought to tremble
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and kiss the son lest they be
destroyed. But to those was who know
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Jesus Christ, those of us who
have been who have had the eyes of
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our hearts enlightened so that we can
see we've been given hope, beloved,
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we don't need to fear anything.
Nothing Paul says can separate us from the
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love of God in Christ Jesus.
Not Height, not depth, not things
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above nothings, a blow, nothing, he says in Romans, and he's
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expressing a similar thing here. He's
praying, he a similar thing here,
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that we would come to know these
things, to trust this Lord more and
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more, and in doing so we
that we might grow, that we might
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grow in the praise of his name, that we might grow in hope,
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that we might grow in knowledge,
that we might grow in love. How
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does it happen? How do we, as the body of Christ, grow
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by God answering these very requests in
our prayers. And so let's learn to
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pray in this way. Let's learn
to believe not the speculations of our hearts.
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Let's learn not to wander around in
the darkness and feel after vain things
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and hope in vain glory, but
to put our hope in the father of
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glory, who has sent his son
and his spirit into this world so that
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we might belong to the body of
Christ and be called sons and daughters of
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the Living God, to have an
inheritance in Christ and to be kept in
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it all by the immeasurable power of
God toward us who believe. Let's pray
